Clandestine. Cake. Club. All together in one sentence. Does the very notion send thrills down your cake-seeking veins? It did mine. A little tweet of an invite and within minutes I’d accepted to be part of an underground movement whose weapons of mass revolution are eggs, butter, sugar and flour and sundry additional adornments.
The theme was ice cream, the location: The Beach Hut, Watergate Bay. This little bunny had a vision – a giant chocolate ice cream sundae. In my head it was enormous, barely able to fit in the car, let alone anyone’s mouth, dripping in chocolate, rammed with layers of brownie and Victoria sponge plastered together with whipped cream and interspersed with pears in red wine. It was genius. Chaos. A trophy to cake decadence.
The reality was a little less than visionary especially after one of the brownie ‘flakes’ protruding out of the cream, collapsed onto the table and the layers began to drip into each other. But it tasted good, looked fun and stood tall on the table. And that is what CCC in Cornwall is all about – rediscovering the pleasure of cake in a social context and a very noble notion it is too.
CCC is a nationwide club, that runs along the lines of a secret supper club or The Secret Tea Room, but different. Ellie of Bare Foot Media was the driving force and we were joined by the likes of Will Ashworth (who baked a Chunky Monkey cake based on the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream), Jessica Miln (lovely to finally meet her) and Stuart Pate – Stein’s exec pastry chef at The Seafood Restaurant – who came with a stunning baked Alaska wrecklessly defying the logics of temperature.
For the next one (in 6 weeks time) I will mostly be lowering my vision to table level and attempting something that my fellow secret cakers can actually grapple with (ie no flower vases). Meanwhile, long live cake!
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